Treacle

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Bottle of Dutch treacle

Treacle, or molasses (American & Canadian English), is any uncrystallized syrup made during the refining of sugar.[1][2] Treacle is used both in cooking as a sweetener and as a condiment.

The most common forms of treacle are the pale syrup known as golden syrup and the darker syrup usually referred to as dark or black treacle. Dark treacle has a distinctively strong, slightly bitter flavor, and a richer color than golden syrup,[3] yet not as dark as molasses. Golden syrup is the main sweetener in treacle tart.

Etymology

Historically, the Middle English term treacle was used by herbalists and apothecaries to describe a medicine (also called theriac or theriaca), composed of many ingredients, that was used as an antidote treatment for poisons, snakebites or various ailments.[2] Triacle comes from the Old French triacle, in turn from (unattested and reconstructed) Vulgar Latin triacula, which comes from Latin theriaca,[4] the latinisation of the Greek θηριακή (thēriakē), the feminine of θηριακός (thēriakos), "concerning venomous beasts",[5] which comes from θηρίον (thērion), "wild animal, beast".[6][7]

Production

Treacle is made from the syrup that remains after sugar is refined. Raw sugars are first treated in a process called affination. When dissolved, the resulting liquor contains the minimum of dissolved non-sugars to be removed by treatment with activated carbon or bone char. The dark-colored washings are treated separately, without carbon or bone char. They are boiled to grain (i.e. until sugar crystals precipitate out) in a vacuum pan, forming a low-grade massecuite (boiled mass) which is centrifuged, yielding a brown sugar and a liquid by-product—treacle.[8]

In popular culture

Treacle tart with clotted cream

At Halloween, especially in Scotland, a traditional task visiting children had to accomplish in order to win their treat was to eat a scone spread with treacle ("treacle scone") which was suspended on a piece of string at about head height. They had to do so without using their hands, resulting in treacle-covered faces.[citation needed]

In chapter 7 of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Dormouse tells a story of Elsie, Lacie and Tillie living at the bottom of a well, which confuses Alice, who interrupts to ask. "The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, 'It was a treacle-well.'" This is an allusion to the so-called "treacle well", the curative St. Frideswide's Well at Binsey, Oxfordshire.[9]

In "I'm Called Little Buttercup" from Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore, Buttercup includes "treacle and toffee" in her list of treats for sale.

The Arctic Monkeys have a song named "Black Treacle" on the album Suck It and See.

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ "Treacle Origins and Uses at www.recipes4us.co.uk". 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Oxford Dictionary ISBN 978-1-85152-101-2
  3. ↑ merriam-webster.com
  4. ↑ theriacus, Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary, on Perseus
  5. ↑ θηριακός, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  6. ↑ θηρίον, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  7. ↑ Treacle, on Oxford Dictionaries
  8. ↑ Heriot p 392
  9. ↑ p14, Oxford in English literature: the making, and undoing, of "the English Athens" (1998), John Dougill, University of Michigan Press, ISBN 0-472-10784-4.

Notations

  • Heriot, Thomas Hawkins Percy (1920). The manufacture of sugar from the cane and beet. London: Longmans, Green and co. 

External links

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